


You've Always Been the Sweetest Song

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: Right Here, With You [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Under the Red Hood
Genre: AU of Jason's return to Gotham, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Crying, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hugs, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 07:03:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18960280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. If pressed, Bruce couldn’t say which outcome he desired, which outcome he feared. If he could go back in time, if he could change that day, even at the cost of his own life, he would. God help him, he would in a heartbeat.





	You've Always Been the Sweetest Song

There would be an explanation. There was always an explanation. Even if he didn’t like it, even if it didn’t—at first glance—make sense, the explanation existed. He just had to find it.

As best Bruce could reason, there were nine possibilities, ranging in plausibility from manageably unusual to outright insane, as dictated by the facts he could be sure of.

These were those facts:

  * There was a new player in Gotham working under the moniker Red Hood.
  * Red Hood was dangerous and amoral, responsible for the death of dozens in his short time in Gotham.
  * Though he had inserted himself into Gotham’s drug scene, Red Hood seemed uninterested in forming strategic alliances. Instead, he cracked down on the reigning kingpins without regard for territory or commonly held agreements.
  * There was no evidence of any alliance, partnership, or other agreement with any of Gotham’s rogues, active or inactive.
  * Red Hood appeared to be intimately familiar with Batman’s tactics, with a deep and unsettling knowledge of the gear, fighting style, routines, surveillance protocol, and other maneuvers.
  * Red Hood knew Bruce’s name.
  * Red Hood was too broad to be Dick and too tall to be Tim, and Bruce had also seen the man while in the presence of his two partners.
  * Red Hood was too young to be Alfred. Even the mask failed to completely hide the youthfulness in that gravelly voice.
  * Rigorous investigation showed no signs of compromise among Bruce’s few remaining associates—Dr. Thompkins, Commissioner and Barbara Gordon, the Justice League—nor had he had any falling out significant enough to warrant suspicion of a deliberate breach.
  * Red Hood ran in a way Bruce knew.
  * Red Hood fought in a way Bruce knew.



There was another, much shorter list of things Bruce suspected. Things he couldn’t prove but that gnawed on him like a predator on a hunk of bone. Things he refused to look at now, because the unprovable was of no use.

Given the facts, and only the facts, these were the possibilities as he saw them, from most to least likely:

  * This was a very realistic simulation.
  * This was a very realistic nightmare.
  * Red Hood was a known associate from another dimension.
  * Red Hood was a shapeshifting, mind-reading meta of unknown origins.
  * Red Hood was a clone of Bruce himself.
  * Bruce was experiencing a psychotic break and had yet to realize it.
  * Jason Todd was dead and Red Hood was his clone.
  * Jason Todd was dead and Red Hood was his evil doppelgänger.
  * Jason Todd was alive.



The blood from his batarang would provide the answer. The sample was cycling now. All he had to do was wait.

The Cave was empty. Bruce’s foul mood—really, no more than poorly disguised panic, but foul nonetheless—had run off everyone else. Even Alfred. He was alone, with nothing but the computer and a backlit memorial case to keep him company. It was safe to rest his head in his hands, so he did.

The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming. If pressed, Bruce couldn’t say which outcome he desired, which outcome he feared. If he could go back in time, if he could change that day, even at the cost of his own life, he would. God help him, he would in a heartbeat.

But that wasn’t how life worked, or not any life that he knew. All Bruce had was the life before him, the one with visits from Dick, patrol with Tim, and solitary visits to a quiet cemetery. To hope for anything different was… foolish.

So he ignored the restless fluttering in his chest and the sensation of an eternal drop in his stomach. And he waited.

Even when the results returned and the screen flashed bright with a name and an achingly familiar face, Bruce felt like he was waiting still. Some possibilities were scratched off, some shuffled to put them higher or lower in the probability rankings. But the truth waited. The truth lurked, like a crocodile in a muddy river, nothing but eyes and teeth ready to sink into the meat of him and drag him under.

The day passed as a smear against his consciousness. Bruce didn’t remember going to bed or rising the next morning. He didn’t remember the little moments of life—eating, using the restroom, showering, talking to Alfred, texting Dick or Tim. Red Hood wouldn’t appear again in Gotham until day passed into night, so it was for the night that Bruce waited. His head spun in a whirl of conjecture, of _how_ and _why_ and _what if_ with no answers to speak of.

Which wasn’t to say he was wasting his day. Bruce spent much of it hunched over the keyboard in the Cave, pulling surveillance, putting out inquiries, digging up (he shuddered) new information.

He couldn’t tell Alfred. Couldn’t bear the thought of putting the old man through whatever it was _this_ was without answers. Couldn’t tell Dick or withstand the confusion, the demands, the fresh heartbreak. Couldn’t tell Tim. Couldn’t begin to fathom what this would mean for any of them.

The only person he did tell was Clark. Not what was happening in Gotham. Not the test he had run or the result that had come back. But he had asked a favor. He sent Clark to look through a grave, and then he sat, alone with Clark’s report, his thoughts, and the burgeoning foreboding that something inconceivable was just over the horizon.

And then it was night.

Bruce was, at his heart, a doer. The bigger the problem, the more he ached to begin. The bigger the mystery, the more his body strained to move forward, to unravel, to solve. Tonight, his whole body burned. But with what little he knew of Red Hood, he knew this for certain: he would not find the man by seeking him out.

So Bruce patrolled, running his normal routes like an automaton, with one eye on the sky and one ear to the streets. The other half of him waited, watching for the glint of red, listening for a voice rough with rage.

Red Hood found him on a rooftop. It wasn’t a special rooftop. Just a normal, poured concrete flat roof above one of the dozens of high-rise complexes in Gotham. They could have been on the Moon for all Bruce noticed.

There was talking. Or rather, shouting. And Bruce should be paying attention with more than the back half of his brain that worked to file the gleaned information, but the rest of him was straining forward, trying to see beneath the mask. Trying to peel back the layers of lost years to find his son.

It couldn’t be Jason. Jason Todd was just a boy, slight and wiry even for fifteen. He had yet to reach his growth spurt, his potential for height only evident in the gangliness of his limbs, the knobby stretch of hands and feet too big for him. Though fed regularly and lovingly by Alfred, he had never quite shaken the damage of years of malnutrition. He was just a little boy.

Red Hood, on the other hand, was a man. Nearly as broad as Bruce himself and just as tall, he cut an intimidating figure even without the armor and weaponry. Whereas Jason’s voice had been high and cracked on occasion, Hood’s voice was low and rough, like a crowbar dragged across cement. And he was angry. So angry. Jason had been angry, too, but in the normal way of teenagers, in the way Bruce himself could remember being, if he cast his memory back. But Hood’s anger went beyond, went farther, went deeper. He burned with it like a matchstick. There was no telling what would remain when he had burned himself out.

“Take off your mask.”

Bruce didn’t remember making a conscious choice to speak those words. But they were there, hovering in the chilled night air between them. They were Batman’s words, gruff and uncompromising. An order a Robin would obey.

Red Hood laughed. It was not Jason’s laugh. It was hard, unyielding, and utterly devoid of humor.

“You ran the blood. I knew you would.”

“Take off your mask.” He needed to see. He needed to see his face.

“You don’t give orders to me, old man. Not anymore.”

Stop. _Stop_. Don’t use his words. Don’t use that name. Not without proof.

“ _Take off your mask_.”

“You first.”

It was meant as a challenge, a gauntlet thrown down. Rule number one: Never, ever remove the cowl. The cowl was safety, privacy, security. No matter what, Bruce couldn’t afford to be seen, to be recognized.

Bruce bent his head and pulled off his cowl. The night air licked at the sweat on his skin. He felt almost dizzy, relieved of the weight and the pressure of the mask. He tossed the cowl to theground and waited.

Hood let out a sharp huff, lost somewhere between a laugh and a snort.

“Alright. Alright, fine.”

The helmet unhooked with the soft hiss of a loosened seal, and then Hood was pulling it off.

Bruce stopped breathing.

Hood wore a slim black domino across his eyes. The eyes themselves blazed, flickering between a deep blue and a bright green. The chin was strong and square, the jaw angular and sharp as a blade. It was a man’s face, with only the barest hint of a boy left, clinging to the edges like a ghost.

But he knew that face. The trappings might be different, but architecture was the same. He knew every line, every angle, every curve.

(The lines had been broken the last time he had seen them, the angles shattered, the curves swollen black. How could this be? How could this possibly be?)

“What, no welcome home hug?” Hood— _Jason_ —sneered, arms held wide, a gun dangling from one hand. “Aren’t you happy to see me, old man?”

Bruce couldn’t feel his fingers. He was floating free from his feet. He could barely hear over the rushing in his ears and the almost sub-audible bass beat of his pounding heart. _A very realistic nightmare_ had been one of his options, and this felt like a dream, except… What nightmare held a Jason Todd living, breathing, _existing_?

Clone. Doppelgänger. Psychotic break. Alive.

Bruce stepped forward without thought. Or rather, without any thought beyond bridging the distance between _here_ and _there_.

Hood— _Jason_ —was still talking. At Bruce’s movement, he had swung the gun around and pointed it squarely at Bruce’s chest. Bruce didn’t care. This was Jason—alive, existing, _breathing_ —and he didn’t care if he was a clone or a doppelgänger or a maddened illusion from a broken mind.

The distance was snapped up in an instant. The man on the other end took a step back, rattled despite himself by Bruce’s determined approach, but it was too late. The gun was caught between them, still a danger but not Bruce’s concern.

He grabbed the man’s arms, numbness flaring painfully as his fingers connected with flesh and muscle. _Not a psychotic break_.

Bruce pulled Red Hood into his arms and held tight. His mind and body both rebelled. This felt wrong. He was too tall, too broad. His head should hit just below Bruce’s collarbone. Bruce’s arms should enclose his back without straining. His body and mind rebelled, but his heart insisted.

Hood had gone stiff with shock. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had emptied the gun into Bruce’s stomach.

Bruce’s arms tightened further, one hand coming up to cup the back of the neck, and he buried his nose into the sweaty, riotous curls.

He knew that smell. Bruce breathed in movie nights and late-night homework sessions, false alarms and real scares, sick days and training sessions. He knew the smell of these curls, of this boy, as well as he knew his own name.

_Jason_.

Nothing else mattered. Not the discarded cowl. Not the gun pressed against his stomach or the tears streaming down his face. Not even the riot of shock and anger that kept the body in his arms tight and stiff. Because the one thing that couldn’t possibly be true, was.

Jason Todd was _alive_. And he had come home.

**Author's Note:**

> Gotta thank cylobaby27 and audreycritter for this one. The former for watching Under the Red Hood with me (and just generally being an excellent Jason stan) and the latter for letting me yell about how GoodDad!Bruce _should_ have reacted to his beloved son returning from the dead.
> 
> As always, the fic falls a little short of the curl-smelling glory in my head, but it feels good to get it out on paper, so to speak.
> 
> Oh, and the fic title comes from "Right Here, With You" by David Cook, which I strongly urge you all to listen to with Bruce in mind.


End file.
